Review: Assessment of the Doable Utilisation of Dendrochronology as an Element Tracer Technology in Soils Artificially Contaminated with Heavy Metals

Abstract

In the modern industrial world, there are many mineral resources of such emissions from metal exploitation to below-ground extraction. Tree-ring analysis or dendrochronology is both an old and a modern science. Tree rings are bound to the process of secondary radial growth of the xylem. Woody monocotyledons never form tree rings due to the absence of secondary xylem. To reconstruct trace metals contamination history, annual growth rings should be studied first as the potential archive of these lost elements in the wide environment. In recent decades, it has become a science with a broad range of applications such as global climate change, canopy process decline, the carbon cycle, and many others. We aimed to give an overview of the main features of metals transporters in plants drawing on information from previous studies in a wide variety of organisms. Here, we traced the mechanism of the heavy metals bioaccumulation in different biological systems as the phytostabilization (immobilization in plant roots), dendroremediation (growing trees in polluted soils), and hyperaccumulation (exceptional metal concentration in plant shoots). Further, this review highlights better understanding of the bioaccumulation and transportation of the metals in the variety of organisms and contaminated ecosystems showing the dendrochronology viable role as sustainable and eco-friendly bioremediation technology. Our findings have also referred to the micronutrients for plant metabolism which are existed to satisfy the requirements of cellular metabolism to protect cells from toxic effects. As a result, we consider tree-ring an indicator for pollution with transition metals especially for the roots in contaminated soils. This technique can monitor historical changes in atmospheric trace metals deposition and mobilisation in soil.